


The Game

by Foophile



Category: Battlestar Galactica 2003
Genre: Community: rounds_of_kink, F/M, Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-11
Updated: 2011-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-22 10:52:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foophile/pseuds/Foophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Kara sighed expansively and took another gulp of alcohol. “Lee, I can see us in a hundred different places than here.”"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Game

**Author's Note:**

> BSG and its named characters are not mine. All original characters are of my own invention. Warning for spoilers up to the third season and gross abuse of the timeline.

_It started as a game to keep them awake when the Cylons were attacking every 33 minutes:_

Lee was a reluctant as Kara to take stimulants but he could admit when he needed them.

The dark void of space seemed like a blanket over his eyes, begging them to close, enticing his body to relax and his hand to slip off of the joystick.

A snore came over the com and snapped him out of his doze. “Wake up!” He shouted for the benefit of the entire scouting party. Lee was somewhat pleased to see only two of his pilots sharply correct their headings. Kara was not one of them – although Lee suspected that she really could fly in her sleep.

As if she could hear his thoughts, Kara’s grinning voice came over the wireless. “Let’s play a game.”

“We can’t play triad in a Viper, Starbuck,” Flyboy teased.

“So you say,” Kara said, “But no, where would you be if we weren’t here right now?”

“You mean instead of waiting for the Cylons to end human existence?” Another voice asked cynically. It was Flat Top watching them from the Raptor below, closest to the civilians.

He heard Kara snort. “I don’t know about you, but after we destroy these tin cans for good, I’m going on a vacation.”

Even though Lee knew that none of the Colonies existed the way that they used to be (he couldn’t think beyond the finality of that not without breaking down), he could see Kara basking in the artificial sunlight of Cloud 9. Maybe in some tiny bikini that will entice on-lookers but also make them think twice once they saw her toned biceps and tight abs.

The vision powered his next question: “Can you go without flying a Viper for that long?”

Kara laughed. “Who says I can’t take it with me?”

“The Fleet might have something to say,” Flat Top snarked.

Lee didn’t think before he said, “Only if she’s the only one.”

All of the pilots laughed.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Kara shouted over the wireless.

A wild moan came over the com. “Apollo sunbathing on the wing of a Viper,” Honey Bear, another Viper pilot, said as if she were imagining it. As she was the only other female pilot in the party the rest gagged and groaned in disgust.

Any other day the insubordination would have been reprimanded, if not by Lee himself then CIC listening in, but today when it seemed like every half an hour was the last, Lee simply laughed. Honey Bear had been eying him since he’d arrived.

“You and me, Apollo,” Kara continued chuckling. “The second all of this is done.”

Lee swallowed hard at the dangerous image. It had been years since Zak and he still felt guilty for looking at Starbuck as more than a sister. He opened his mouth to say that it was a date when Galactica’s Communications Officer, a woman he’d only met once thus far named Dualla, warned that there were numerous DRADIS contacts several yards away.

 _The game was anticipated on Colonial Day when, for the first time in weeks, there appeared to be a moment for breathing :_

The taste of non-recycled water was an unfamiliar pleasure on his tongue. He licked his lips once, twice, and then decided to throw in the towel and sip directly from the gushing hose in his hand.

Kara lay panting in the grass next to him. They were both dripping wet but happy for the time being.

Lee used her black cane to poke her gently in the side. “Is this the vacation you wanted?”

He watched her blink in confusion then recall what she’d said with a smile that rivaled the artificial sun. “Remember that huh?”

“Yeah, sure,” Lee returned the grin. “I liked the game. It’s almost…hopeful.”

“Hopeful? Nothing I’ve done has ever been described quite like that.” Kara turned over on her stomach and picked aimlessly at the turf.

Lee frowned. “Don’t think you’re capable of it?”

“No, it’s not that,” Kara said. “I just…Frak, I don’t know. I needed an escape and wondered if you guys did too.”

Lee nodded and let that settle between them. He’d had a little time to deal with the reality they faced although he was certain that the enormous hole in chest would never heal. The Fleet, the rest of the human race, were facing a very unsure future and Lee realized that they would probably be on the front lines until their lives or the war were over. Escape would only be possible in their minds.

“Remember that tiny bar down from the Academy on Caprica?” He asked when his thoughts grew dark. Lee saw Kara nod out of the corner of his eye. “There was that old jukebox that could only play two songs-”

“Only one really,” Kara interrupted with a giggle. “The second always cut off in the middle.”

Lee smiled at the memory. “Yeah, that’s right. Well I spent the whole day at that bar the day before we graduated. Not even getting drunk, just sitting out on the rickety porch in the back and petting a stray dog. And that one song - Gods, I can’t even remember what it was now – played all day, over and over, like someone had put a bag full of change in.”

Lee turned over onto his stomach and found a captive audience. “It was so warm but perfect with the cool breeze blowing in off the coast and the smell of roasted peanuts coming from inside.” He sighed. “I wanted to stay there forever. Was late picking my mom up because I didn’t want to leave.”

Kara gave him a contemplative look. “You liked the Academy that much?”

Lee thought about it and shook his head. “No, I don’t think it was the Academy but who I was when I was there that I liked. That I miss.”

“You weren’t all that different. Just less of a tight ass.”

Lee narrowed his gaze and Kara cracked up, not intimidated in the slightest. He didn’t even try to contain his grin.

“However I was,” He continued. “I’d want to be right there now. I mean,” Lee rolled over again onto his back. “This is nice but it's still work.”

Kara nudged him as she rolled over as well, her thigh brushed his. “Would you let me sit out there with you this time? Maybe share a beer?”

Lee could see it instantly. The both of them with their feet up on the rotting boards holding the porch to the brick building. Kara, looking very much the way she did now, bright and shining in _real_ sunlight holding a wet bottle of beer or sharing a full bottle of Ambrosia. His body tingled with the fantasy.

“If I’d been able to find you that day Kara, I would have dragged you out there with me then.”

Kara’s smile made Lee wish that one of the many lounges on Cloud 9 had a broken old jukebox and a bag of change.

 _Playing the game was inevitable after the business with Scar and Kat and that Resistance fighter:_

Where Kara kept finding all of the Ambrosia, Lee had no idea. Part of him, the admittedly good part, really didn’t want to know. But the part of him that he thought was changing was extremely jealous of Starbuck’s resources. It was the dominant feeling at the moment only because he was heading towards extremely drunk.

The rec room was empty for a few hours and even though both pilots should have been using the time to bunk, recent events and Kara’s funk, demanded that they spend it right there.

Kara’s silence was more disturbing that Lee would ever admit. She simply wasn’t a quiet person.

“Hey,” He said to get her attention. “If you could be anywhere else…”

Kara sighed expansively and took another gulp of alcohol. “Lee, I can see us in a hundred different places than here.”

Lee lifted an eyebrow challengingly. “A hundred? That’s a hell of an imagination.”

“You have no idea,” Kara flirted. She passed on the bottle and their fingers brushed. Lee felt his blood alight.

“What about,” He cleared his suddenly clogged throat. “The things that matter…” He began again and stalled.

Kara looked off into nothing. “I don’t know if anything matters right now.”

“Of course it does.” Lee said but the words sounded as hollow as they felt. He didn’t know either.

Silence descended and felt like an expanding balloon, taking up all of the space in the room until Kara muttered, “I’d be watching Aerelon play the Buccaneers in a full stadium.”

Lee was grateful for her indulgence. “And Caprica would win by how much?”

Kara grinned and winked. “It’d be a landslide, of course. Twenty to zero.”

Lee nearly choked on a swallow. “Now you’re hallucinating.”

 _But Lee never needed to play it more than when they’d found New Caprica. For the first and only time he played it alone._

It had been surprisingly easy to find someone to marry them at a moment’s notice.

As Dee stood by his side and said her vows, Lee couldn’t help but look at the priestess performing their ceremony and wonder if she’d been the one to marry Kara and Anders just hours earlier. When the woman looked at him in askance, he figured that it didn’t matter and focused on the words he was supposed to recite, the vows he made with only half a heart.

The wedding night honestly felt like any other night with Dee in his arms. They’d made love, frantic and joyous, and then went to sleep. Lee found himself awake only a few hours later.

He tried not to think about the previous night but couldn’t erase the memories from his mind.

Lee could still feel the child-like exhilaration of shouting that he loved Kara into the night sky. Even though he’d touched her a hundred times before, it felt like she’d been softer when she was writhing in his arms.

He finally knew, up close and personal, what Kara's face looked like as she came on his cock. How she blushed all over right before she tightened so perfectly and drove him over the edge along with her. The peaceful look on her face as she slept, that would have been unbelievable if Lee hadn’t seen it for himself.

Lee never would have imagined last night that by the following he would be married to another woman.

That night, his wedding night, he retreated from his marital bed for the first time and felt no shame in fantasizing that he was anywhere else but on this new uncertain planet. He wandered the shrubbery of New Caprica, as alone as he felt in his heart, and came in his fist screaming the name of another man’s wife.

Lee hadn’t been surprised in the slightest when he found out that Kara was retiring. For possibly the first time in her life she actually had the chance to live her fantasy, while Lee was left with the memory of an old jukebox and a night sometimes he thought was just a dream. Fantasies, he decided, were for the hopeful.

He never played the game again.


End file.
